Ex-watchdog starts center to monitor student loans

Three months ago, one of the government’s top student loan watchdogs, Seth Frotman, stepped down from his job at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau with a scathing resignation letter that criticized the Trump administration for undermining the agency’s enforcement efforts.

And he took some people with him.

Frotman and other former bureau employees plan to continue the work they did for the government at a new Washington-based nonprofit, the Student Borrower Protection Center. The new venture, announced last week, will focus on aiding borrowers by working with state and local officials, rather than the federal officials who Frotman said favor lenders and servicers.

Mick Mulvaney, the acting head of the consumer bureau and Frotman’s former boss, has complained about the “moral consequences” of students failing to repay their debts, and he removed a planned student loan collection overhaul from the agency’s long-term regulatory agenda. At the same time, the Education Department wants to reduce state oversight of the federal loan servicers.

“The federal government hasn’t just walked away from the fight on behalf of borrowers,” Frotman said. “It is actually arming the other side.”

A spokesman for the consumer bureau declined to comment last week on the activities of former employees.

More than 44 million Americans collectively owe $1.5 trillion on their student loans, eclipsing any other kind of consumer debt outside of mortgages. The balance has more than doubled in the last decade, fueling what Frotman sees as a nationwide crisis. As the debt level has risen, so has the number of borrowers who have fallen behind or defaulted on what they owe.